From Napkin to Notoriety: The Meteoric Rise of That Writer You Can’t Stand

And from such humble beginnings, a six-figure book deal. And from that
six-figure book deal, a seven-figure movie deal. And from that
seven-figure movie deal, well, only he can write his future.

And write it he will. Because he’s that writer you can’t stand.

The napkin now hangs framed in the home office of his Boerum Hill
brownstone, around the corner from his “second office,” the specialty
coffee shop where we meet up. “It’s technically my dad’s brownstone,”
he whispers, a glimmer of torment in his eye. “But the napkin’s all
mine.”

He likes to take up two chairs at the shop when he writes, because
creative freedom, he asserts, requires space. He knows his artistic
process like the back of his hand, and doesn’t seem to mind that I have
no place to sit. But I shouldn’t mind, either, because he’s an artist, and
he needs what he needs.

With his hair crisply cut back from the man-bun that was once his
signature look, he drops his head in his hands and says, “It’s tough,
you know? Because I finally made it. And I was starting to think that I
never would.”

After spending two and a half arduous years writing occasionally in his
tiny black Moleskine, [THAT WRITER YOU CAN’T STAND], twenty-six, almost gave
up. He relentlessly foisted his half-baked poems on any publishing-world
gatekeeper, and spent the rest of his time thinking many deep thoughts.
He never even considered getting a job—partially because he didn’t need
to, but mostly because he knew in his heart that he was going to be a
success.

But that ardent knowledge didn’t stop him from feeling oppressed, or
from expressing that feeling to everyone around him. “It was like no one
saw the me that was inside of me,” he tells me. “The rejection was
hard. Really hard. I even cried about it once. You’d think that it would
get easier over time, but it doesn’t. I mean, two and a half years, and
more than twenty poems submitted—and nothing.”

Until nothing became something.

“A buddy of mine from college rose through the ranks really quickly at a
big publishing house, and I was, like, ‘Can you help me get a book deal?’
And he was, like, ‘Yeah.’ And then he did.” All those months toiling
away had finally led him to his destiny. He goes on, “I had never
written a book before, but I knew I could do it. I didn’t have a doubt
in my mind.”

In the two published poems I have to go off of, [THAT WRITER YOU CAN’T STAND]’s work weaves together the personal and the universal. “I love
stories,” he says. “All of my poems are really stories. Didn’t cavemen
tell stories? I think so. I’m just like the cavemen. We all are.”

His poem “Pater Paternal Pat” is only three words long, but he wouldn’t
let us reprint them. “Dad/Bad,” which is the work he’s most famous for,
and also the only other poem he’s ever published, illuminates the
relationship between all fathers and sons throughout time, especially
the fathers who are top executives at multinational corporations.

When his book is released, in 2019, it will likely be reviewed kindly, and
with great enthusiasm. Then he will, doubtlessly, go on to achieve great
success in this and other fields. “I’m pretty sure I can do some pretty
big things,” he says to me, while winking.

Before I leave the coffee shop, I ask him what was on that original
napkin. He replies with a Grinch-like smirk: “Magicians never reveal
their secrets, and neither do I.”